Taste
by elphabathedelirious32
Summary: Clarice always wondered, that first day in the dungeon, what had made Dr. Chilton say she was exactly to Dr. Lecter's "taste." Here's one answer. The young doctor falls for a fellow medical student whose past has certain...similarities...to his own.
1. Chapter 1

Clarice always wondered, that first day in the dungeon, what had made Dr. Chilton say she was exactly to Dr. Lecter's "taste," as awful as the pun was.

He saw her the first day of Osteology class and he knew immediately that he wanted her. To fuck, to eat, or just to listen to, he wasn't sure. All he knew, after one class with her, was that she was the first person he'd ever met who might just be smarter than he was.

Her name was Ava Burke, and she was also absolutely beautiful. She wasn't beautiful traditionally, she was beautiful like an idealized version of a feral child, half-faery. She had dark curls, skin the white of cream on milk, large, long-lashed green eyes, and a delicate Irish nose, pinched in at the tip, and a lovely bow-lipped mouth. (He would know; he'd spent the whole lecture sketching her).

She was one of only three women in his class, but she was the only one in all his other lectures, and she was the only one he looked at twice. She was also the only one, man or woman, who spoke up to challenge the professors, and was always right.

He approached her after their third lecture together and asked her to lunch.

"Why?" she asked, giving him a sharp, librarian's glare (she wore delicate silver spectacles, which he found charming).

"What do you mean, 'why?'" he asked. He knew his own assets, knew he was smart, handsome, darkly charming. Few women turned him down.

"_Why_. Because I am attractive? Because you wish to discuss osteology with me? Because you want to fuck me-" she paused and gave him a level look over her glasses as she said "fuck"- a challenge. "I could go on."

"Don't." He tilted his head and gave her her own look back. "Because, yes. You are extremely attractive, and I do wish to discuss osteology with you, particularly since I spent the entire lecture thinking of how I should like very much-" he curled his lip a little, in amused distaste- "to _fuck_you, as you so indelicately put it-"

She made as if to walk away, but he put a hand on her shoulder and she stopped, throwing him an impatient glare.

"But also because you may be the first person I have ever met who is more intelligent than I am."

She gave him a measuring look. "Well," she said, "I suppose I shall have to accept, if only to ascertain what manner of compliment you've just bestowed."

This was how it began. How it ended—but to tell that would be to get ahead of the story, and that could be considered rude, so that we shan't do.

It took three weeks for them to end up in bed. They were both methodical, they both liked to be sure. She thought the stakes were higher for her than for him, because in those days they usually were for the woman. She didn't know about his past, of course; she didn't know that sharing would be difficult, if not impossible, for him to do, that in taking her to bed he was risking discovery. And _her_—

- she wanted to be a forensic anthropologist. It was an infant science then, just beginning to be taken at all seriously, like Ava herself, her chin-length curls shaking as she raised her hand again and again. Half the professors didn't acknowledge her. She talked over them. She was very good at what she did, and what she did was the one thing that might be the end of him, if those who practiced it were so clever as she.

A fair portion of those three weeks were spent in the library, he with his eyes half-shut, putting new information in place in his memory palace, she with her eyes wide open, absorbing until she could throw his neuroanatomy in his face and he her osteology in hers. They had both chosen practices that were part art as well; feeling the weight of a bone in one's hand, sliding a hand along it to find the sharpness of the supraorbital ridge, looking at the ridges and eminences and constructing a life; asking questions and probing answers out reluctantly; diagnosing brain from subjective speech.

They agreed to switch off, quizzing each other on anatomy and then on each other.

He found out the essentials of her life: born in the mountains of Massachusetts to Irish immigrants who knew the importance of land and stories both. Her younger sister disappeared when she was ten. If they ever found her now, she'd be bones.

"How old was she?"

"Four."

"What was she called?"

"Grainne. Grace, in English."

He laced his fingers in hers and spoke the words for the third time. He told her of the tiny bones he'd buried. She didn't cry; she watched him with large eyes, absorbing, leaning toward him. There seemed to be ghosts in the other chairs at their table; they felt more than heard the matching laughter of two small girls, one dark-haired, one tow-headed, jumping up from their seats and skipping off together to haunt the stacks. Grace and Mischa.

"So you're…?" she said later.

"Bin gar keine Russin, stamm'aus Litauen," he said. "_Keine _echt deutsch."

"I love _The Waste Land_," she said.

"Mein Irisch Kind."

"I'm not a child."

"Good."

…

She said, "Out of pragmatism, I should tell you. My hymen is intact."

"Ne tu t'inquietes pas."

"Est-ce-que tu…"

"Oui."

"Maintenent je m'inquiete."

"Nous sommes medecins, nous savons…"

"Tais-toi."

He obeyed.

…

They had only just learned to stand, and now they began to run. He practically lived in her apartment, because it was nicer. Small, just a big room with a kitchen and a bathroom thrown on, but there was an enormous picture window, and the floors gleamed, and she kept it neat and well decorated. She had a bed, a large desk, an escritoire, and bookshelves upon bookshelves.

At the moment, a month after that night, she was drinking white wine, wearing soft white pantelets and a white silk tank top, and re-reading _Hamlet, _stretched out on the bed. He hummed Bach and fingered the piece on her calf.

"Mmm," she said. "I'm bored. Tell me a secret."

"I've none I can tell you, liebchen."

"A story, then, a storin."

"You're the storyteller."

"I made you dinner and gave you wine. Entertain me."

"I can do _that_."

She shook her head like a child, curls getting in her eyes.

"Nope. Tell me a dark and horrible tale, with blood."

"Oh, that's lovely."

"So they tell me."

"There's not enough blood in your life?"

"Not nearly."

"Very well."

He had contemplated it for a long while, since the night they had shared their sisters, brought them briefly into being in each other's minds. He knew it was a risk, but she, if anyone—she would understand. And sometime he did feel quite alone, and quite monstrous. Perhaps she would hate him, though, and he couldn't have abided that. But now—this was a perfect opportunity. He could brush it off as a mere tale if she seemed revolted, and otherwise…So he told her. He fuzzed the edges a little, making it father and daughter instead, making them Ukrainian, but essentially he told her very much what he had done.

She listened intently, saying only one thing.

"You've got the ages wrong."

"What?"

"Why did it take him so long, if he did it as soon as he could? It wouldn't have been ten years."

"He was looking for them."

"Mmm, no, you told that part, it wasn't ten years."

"Ava—"

"Aoife."

"What?"

"My real name. A-o-i-f-e, Eh-fa. I anglicized it, but I thought you should know precisely who you're telling."

"I'm only telling you a story."

She sat up and took his hands. "No, you aren't. You—wouldn't invent this—not with—just- Tell me the rest, please."

He knew what she meant, and that she was right: to them, dead girl-children were sacred. He told her, precisely. When he had finished, she blinked like a cat.

"Have you done it again—since?"

"No."

"I would do it, if I found whoever-"

"You would?"

"Yes."

"Not send him to your courts, to prison?"

She laughed and he was reminded of what he had thought when he first saw her; half-faery. Irish faeries were vicious. Aoife was a wind-demon, he knew, in legend. She killed the children of her husband, jealous of his affection. She did what needed doing.

"No. No, him dead in some chair or sitting in a cell—that's no good. He killed my sister to her face, whoever he is, he took her and killed her in his hands. He watched her go. I want to see the light go out of his eyes, like a dying deer, I want to feel his last pulse of blood cover my hands, I want him dead under me. I want him to plead before me, on his knees, and then I want to slice his carotid artery."

"So, we'll find him," Hannibal said. His garnet eyes were alight, like red wine before a fire. Like blood gleaming on the edge of a silver knife.

Ava leaned down and kissed him, and for a moment he was sure he tasted the coppery edge of blood, sure he felt it slick over her lips.

But for the moment, it was only lipstick.

**A/N: So…I have a plot bunny. And here it is. Please, let me know what you think. It started off on a tangent about how forensic anthropology might affect the Good Doctor, leading to, "Oh, that started in the U.S. right around the time he got there, didn't it?" And so, here we have it. Originally, I intended Ava to find out about her lover's hobbies on her own, but I like this better. Sorry if this moves quite fast; I need it to be at the point where the actual story begins. **

**A lexicon: **

**Osteology: the study of bones.**

**Forensic anthropology: The techniques of osteology and physical anthropology applied to the examination of murder victims' remains. **

**Bin gar keine Russin, stamm'aus Litauen, keine echt deutsch: I am not Russian, I'm Lithuanian. Not a true German. Hannibal is quoting, then altering, lines from T.S. Eliot's **_**The Waste Land**_**. The original is Bin gar keine Russin, stamm'aus Litauen, echt deutsch. Mein Irisch Kind is my Irish child, also from **_**The Waste Land**_**, referring to Wagner's **_**Tristan und Isolde**_**. **

**The French Conversation: **

**Don't worry. **

**Are you…**

**Yes. **

**Now I'm worried. **

**We're doctors, we know…**

**Shut up. **

**Liebchen: A diminutive form of "my love," German. **

**A storin: Essentially the same, Irish. **

**The legend referred to is that of the Children of Lir, in which Aoife, the wife of the god Lir, turns her stepchildren into swans for 900 years. As punishment, Lir's father turns her into an air demon, rather like Adam's first wife, Lilith. When the children are finally transformed back into humans (by a Christian priest), they are so old that they die almost immediately. It's a lovely, uplifting story (like most Irish mythology) that's likely an allegory for the shift from paganism to Christianity, which, incidentally, did not work all that incredibly well in Ireland. Pagan traditions persisted for centuries to come, and Irish Catholicism was for a long time quite laissez-faire. We have Henry II and the death of Thomas a Becket to thank for the change; he thought putting the Irish in line would get him back in the Pope's good graces after he got an archbishop killed. But I digress. **


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Apologies for the delay. The muse was for some reason displeased with me. This is mostly just to move things along, which makes the delay even less excusable, but hopefully more will follow on its heels. I also must apologize for the brevity of the chapter and again hope to make up for it soon. **

**Disclaimer: I own only Ava.**

He had long ago catalogued these things about himself: he feared little; nothing made his heart beat fast, other than the plain fact of physical exertion.

It was almost like not really being alive. But she was, Ava was. In everything. When he had gone after Mischa's killers (that quirk of English, that the victim possesses those who have taken her life!), it had been a compulsion, a way almost to relieve an anxiety. Completing the acts had been like any other task until the final moment—like scratching an itch. What a glass of wine is to an alcoholic. Food to a starving man, water to one who has crawled out of the desert with gritty lungs and throat. Hunting itself, killing—the senses were heightened, keen as a falcon's; the world was alive with color and sound, a master's painting, an opera. _He _was alive in it. His blood hummed happily in his veins, with something akin to anticipation.

And yet—the planning of the thing, even, after Grutas, its execution—methodical, clinical. There had been an emptiness in the Canadian incident, a feeling of going through the motions. A satisfaction at the bloodletting, but still a need burning at the back of his throat, a need pulsing in his blood cells.

Ava took to the thought of avenging her sister with, alternately, the glee and rage of a child with a wildly fantastical project before her.

Or perhaps he only thought it childish because the last time he had felt anything so unreservedly, the last time he might have laid claim to anything so fully human and innocent as glee, he was a boy of six.

She was not like him. He knew it because of her quicksilver shifts from joy to rage to pain; because when he took her arm or held her hand or lay beside her, her head against his shoulder, he could feel the variable beating of her heart, speeding or slowing with her moods.

Her eyes, though almost feline in the way she would sometimes stare, almost unblinkingly, so that he began to stop blinking when he spoke to her, too, afraid to miss a twitch in her expression, were not impenetrable, not to him. She had walls, but she built doors in them and gave him keys to allow him safe passage.

He was honored.

She was a mercurial creature, quite different from him. He knew the clicks of her heeled walk like her heartbeat, revealing her state of mind, even the light pressure of her bare feet on the wooden floors of their apartments giving him clues. She walked loudly, announcing herself, when she wasn't trying specifically to be stealthy. Years later, he'd meet another woman who walked the same way, her own unconscious herald, and for a moment when he heard her heels on that stone floor he would have the irrational thought that Ava's face, as it had been in 1959, would emerge before him, and on the heels (he laughed to himself) of that thought, he would decide to speak to this one, not to send her running from his cell. Her pure determination and unconcealed, young hunger would have sealed it, even if her delicate Irish features and striking coloring didn't bring Ava so clearly to mind.

But that would be later.

For now he studied Ava so hard, he didn't notice she was doing precisely the same thing.

One fine May morning, she found him in his lab, sectioning a brain, and told him she wanted to exhume her sister's body.

Even he, with his ineffable calm, almost sliced the amygdala down the middle. He set down his scalpel and looked her directly in the eyes. Neither blinked.

"Do your parents approve?"

"No, and they aren't going to know."

"Hmm."

"I'm not asking your permission."

"I did not think you were." His mouth became small, and his eyes narrowed in thought, scheming. "Do you know how long the drive to your home is?"

"Seven hours."

He glanced at his watch. It was ten in the morning. "Hmm. If we leave now, we shall arrive at five o'clock. Say an hour to pack, then six. We'll need to eat, and find lodgings. The town is small?"

"Yes. Everyone goes to bed before eleven."

"Police?"

"Sleeping in the station or the patrol car."

"Midnight in the graveyard, then."

The serious set of her mouth slipped into a slight smile. "Yes."

He smiled, too. His pulse was even. He picked up the scalpel and finished his work.


End file.
